1980 454

this may sound stupid to those who know but why couldnt a person of skill of coarse take about a 2 inch thick shaft and have it fabricated and balanced to put in place of the tubing on the half shafts thus still giving the IRS and the strength and affordability for the average hot rodder.the diff seems to be beafed as much as possible and would probably get a good season out of it at the least.The inner axles now thats a different story currently the strongest you can perchase would be cold stabilized and heat treated and button insert with about 58 - 62 which is way better than GMs 24 and not to mention when i priced these axles out from gm brand new were over 500 canadian compared to 150 or so remaned.

bahamasair

Ill be in the same boat as you. Im going with a zz502 and really want a 6 speed. I cant really see me having a car like a vette and an auto. The problem is I dont want to be replacing rear ends every time I drive the car. I doubt Ill do much serious racing in a straight line but would like to be able to if I feel the need. I drive pretty hard and can see Ill be getting to know Tom pretty well. I think Ive decided to go with the stick shift and upgrade the rear as much as I can afford and if it still breaks Ill rip it all out and stick in a solid axle. If you are running an auto you will probably be ok for a while at least since the converter absorbs alot of the shock when you stomp on the gas.

lostpatrolman

I believe you would want the largest diameter as possible to spead the load to more surface area. The cobras have solid shafts liek you are talking about, and yes, they have problems with them.

Z-man

Here's a link to CF half shafts...someone here on the forum has 'em...

http://www.exoticmuscle.com/catquery...IVETRAIN#C4400

waterplay

I have a 4spd in the car now and it sounds like I may be in for some more repair work than if I had an auto. I don’t want to go to an auto trans just because I enjoy shifting. I guess I will be slipping the clutch to save the back half and because of that I will need to install zippers so I can replace the burnt clutch on a regular basis. I will need to get a new garage frig to hold all the beer that will be necessary.

What started this car purchase and build was some bench racing with a coworker. He has a 12.9 second WRX so I told him I was going to get a Vette and go faster. Both at the Drag strip and on a road course (RACE TRACK) NOT the street.

Being a newbee here should I start a new thread that deals with what I need to do so I can have my American car hopefully beat his Rice?

Pat71vette

My first 71 vette was a 454 I always use to break the ring gears and posi unit with spyder cracks., never broke a half shaft.
4 speed bang gears between first to second. I got so good at changing the rear I could do it about 15 to 30 minutes. I always kept a fresh one ready to go.

red79vette454

Be safe!!! Build the rearend up as strong as you can afford to!
You don"t want half shafts or the drive shaft comming thru the floor
to greet you at 120 MPH. I have and it's scarry.

Custum73

I have a 383 small block, but have not clue what's in it, and know I don't have 500hp or ft-lbs. Though I am curious what I could change out to approach numbers like that.

waterplay

Parts wise its not that hard. You should have something like a dart or AFR 195-200 aluminum head 9.5-10.0 compression (so you can still run pump gas) and a cam with a profile like the Comp Cams 294hr cam. Sounds easy? Cast, forged, hypereutectic, aluminum Titanium or some other space-aged material is up to how strong you want and how big your bank is.
That is a list of the needed parts. Just remember that there are also lots of other things. The biggest is a GREAT not good machine shop that can do all of the work on the block, block and rotating assembly. You will also need a very good engine assemblyperson.
If you want my recipe PM me and I will let you know what I went with. But this is basically what I have.

MotorHead

Put that combo on a chassis dyno and see what you get out of it, my guess would be in the 325RWHP range possibley a little more, still enough to beat a 12.9 sec. WRX. Does he have time slips or is that just from reading magazines ?

jpatrick636

Maybe this will help. I am north of 500 hp and started out with a stock rear (60,000 mi) with new a drive shaft, half shafts and Spicer 1350 U-joints on 295 street tires. At 75,000, after spirited street driving and a few 1/4 mi passes, I had gear soup which went right through the gear housing.
My intermediate fix was to go to all hardened (US) gears and Tom's outer drive shafts (which are the shafts that come out of the sides of the diff and are connected to the half shafts). As I was already over budget for the year, this was not excessively expensive and will keep me on the street for quite a while.
In a perfect world (you know the one where I have all the money) I would go with the Tom's 12 bolt and carbon fiber shafts. Maybe in the future, when I up the engine output, I'll get to it.
However, like everybody here has been saying; with street tires, you will get some use out of your diff. How fast do you want to go? How much money do you have? Every time you up the ante, the whole system has to be anilyzed. At 500 hp, you are aproaching the limits of a "street tire" C3. Yes you could probable go to 700 but how would you get it to the ground? In other words, your first limiting factor is your ability to get trasction. Once you pass the point of no traction, there is no point to adding hp.
Now, if you start to add traction, your limiting factors become all of the components of your drive train.Take me for example: I could bolt on a set of drag radials of slicks and my car would accelerate much faster. But the big IF comes into play. IF I get more traction, is the diff strong enough, do I need more clutch, can the trans take it, is the rear spring stiff enough, and on and on it goes.
So far, it sounds like you are going to have a sweet (and hot) street car. If you want it to also be a strip car, (and you have the money) I think you will have to eventually upgrade your whole drive train. I would suggest going over to the drag racing section and pumping those guys. Like VETDRMS, they have spent the money and know what works.

waterplay

I hope I have more than 325 RWHP. There couldn’t be or shouldn’t be that much loss through the power train. I contacted Comp Cams and also read an article on their sit that had a similar setup to mine. The biggest difference is I will also have better heads the cam will have the alternate 4/7 firing order switch and more compression.
Unfortunately he does have a time slip and a video. He has now also put on a larger turbo larger injectors and a new front mount intercooler in preparation for our TRACK not street race. I would have to guess that he is now at least in the mid to high 11s now. I think I will need all 550hp to even keep up. Thinking logically I think he will beat me. But I wont tell him that.

DJ Dep

Most of the guys that "haven't had any problem with my rear end" are running autos and/or street tires. Here's a thread some genius (HA!!!) started about what's the C3 really needs. You might find some interesting ideas there:

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...1&page=1&pp=20

Dep

litevette

red79vette454 I love that picture!

jpatrick636

One thing you need to consider is that one of your friend's advantages is weight. There have been some good threads on loosing weight in a C3. You should check them out. Loosing weight is always cheeper than making hp. If your serious about beating him, find out what his weight/hp ratio is and find a way to better it.

MotorHead

Sorry didn't see that hydraulic roller, it should put you into the 350RWHP range which although does not sound like much believe me it is good power.

If you want to get into the 550-600HP range at the flywheel then you are going to have to step the whole combination up to the next level.

hubes

right click, save as

ltlevil

All this talk of running "street" tires to be safe is kind of mis-leading and could get some people into trouble. I mean they have people running 7 second quarter miles on "street" tires, so just because you have "street" tires doesn't mean your safe, I know no one came out and said that. It's just some people's perception of street tires is different than other's. I know a lot of us understand this but there are some guys that may go buy a pair MickeyT's thinking they'll slip a little and have a cushion, next thing you knowthey hook and jerk the rear end out of the car. I'm as interested in the rear end deal as anybody as some of my stuff has been upgraded, mainly 3" half shafts and gears, but that's not enough I know according to popular knowledge. I also know my car ran 9.96@134mph with 275/50/15 Hoosier ET Quick Times. The way it was done was the key. It was really based on the 500HP plumbed into the manifold and bottle fed. I believe that the technique is the biggest factor with how stuff holds up and for how long. I hope I worded this right as I'm not disagreeing with what anyone said it's just the same point of view from a different angle

red79vette454

Thank you!

DJ Dep

You didn't mention..stick or auto? I ran Mickey Thompson "dogbones"
in the old days and traction was almost nil with a stick.

I agree that how you drive is important, and "street tires" is dependant on what people are calling "street" tires. I've seen cheater slicks (not radial) that got traction and blew out u-joints or rear ends, yet they were legal on the street. I think it's fairly safe to say that an auto has MUCH LESS chance of driveline breakage than a stick. There is much less "shock" to the driveline with an auto than a stick. I'm talking relatively "normal" autos...not the transbrake gizmo that Olivier has (and is scared to use). People tend to get more and more agressive when driving with a stick, especially when they think they can lower the ETs. The old "what if I came out of the hole at 1000 HIGHER RPMs"
comes into play many times with a stick.

Dep